What is Virtual Reality?

•According to Winifred Gallagher, author of the recently published “Rapt”, we constantly make decisions determining what we are going to pay attention to. Any events, experiences, and activities not within the scope of our chosen interest will not exist to us as we immerse ourselves in our selected targets of concentration and focus. What we choose to concentrate on defines our state of consciousness and becomes our Reality.

• The fact that our mind and body may be “in two different places at the same time” is not a unique characteristic of Virtual Reality, and does not therefore create the need to refer to this immersive technology as “Virtual Reality”
–If we are deep within our own thoughts, and no longer mindful of our physical surroundings, are we in “virtual reality” ?
–If we are reading a news article on a website, and are so engrossed that we forget that we are late for a meeting, do we say that “virtual reality” interfered with “physical reality”?

•The power of “Virtual Reality” software is in its ability to emancipate the mind from the body, making physical “reality” a minor element of our Federated Reality.
–Federated Reality has two parts:
•Consciousness
•Physical Existence
–For our purposes, we will always need to address the requirements of Physical Existence and Consciousness. However, it is our objective to relegate Physical Existence to nothing more than a set of requirements for accessing a medium that will manipulate the Consciousness away from Physical Existence

•In other words, people have bodies: eyes, hands, etc. We must build software that provides convenient physical access. But after t hat, the vast majority of our attention will be turned to capturing the full attention of the user
–We use “federated” to mean that the two parts of Reality have a partnership, but are not so close as to be synonymous. They are individualy self-sustaining.

•At Étape Partners we believe that there is only one relevant reality, and it is defined as:
– A context of stimulation that acutely focuses awareness and defines our state of consciousness.